Visitation
by Mithrigil
Summary: Basch is nearly eighty years old, and still abides his ghosts. [Basch and Ashe, with Noah, Vossler, Larsa, and others. Takes place in the same timeline as my other works.]


_Note: This takes place in the same timeline as my other works, following **Erlkonig.**_**

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**Visitation**

_**come to this point, your death is your concern**_

_Mithrigil Galtirglin_

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--

His Imperial Majesty leaves no body. He is not the first Solidor to do so, but it still comes as a surprise, especially to those who thought him removed from all things Mist and martial. Basch knows better, and is not perturbed when the hand clutching his crumbles to snowflies and air.

--

_I have no doubt that you will leave Archadia when I am gone,_ reads one of the thousands of papers that Larsa left behind. These were filed neatly, distributed easily, each to its intended end._ In fact, I would have you do so. But before you repair to her, I ask that you detour to that island, you know the one I speak of. I left my faerie-tales there._

Even from beyond the paling, Larsa turns his tiles, Basch thinks, unbidden.

--

"The Kiltias Superior is indisposed," says his acolyte.

Basch prompts him with armored silence.

"He is in a meditative trance," the cleric explains, glancing warily over his shoulder, "to do with the death of your liege and its repercussions. Perhaps he knows of your coming. When he emerges, and has recovered, we will summon you. I regret that none other remain who might know his late Majesty's intent."

Cordially, Basch nods, then turns on his heel.

"You have your lay of the island," the acolyte reminds him, almost as an apology. "Would you care for an escort?"

Basch leaves without answering.

--

The forest has changed.

The earth rarely does that, in Basch's experience, but perhaps it has been long enough.

It is autumn in other parts of the world; here, the leaves on the ground are still mostly green, fallen heavily like the heads of chrysanthemums. They mask what few paths there are and gather under Basch's boots, bleeding white in the breaches of his armor when they get caught, swatting the creatures on the air as he walks. Overhead, the ceiling is the same leaking green as the sun begins to set.

His tread is slow. He takes in the shape of the trees as he passes them, how they beckon, how the shadows fill the gaps in their bark. By the reckoning of trees they are all younger than he. It is almost thirty years since he last walked in this forest. He is nearly four score years old. He has no wish to remind himself of that.

The air teems with the insects as before, clouding as thick as the leaves on the ground. They rest on the visor of his helm, gathering under his eyes. Sometimes his step or a gentle breeze is enough to jostle them. They make the same sounds as they did thirty years ago, the hazy, indistinct muttering of a far-off crowd. His footfalls are louder. It had been peaceful here.

_It still is,_ someone says.

--

They continue to speak to him.

He is lost.

It has grown dark.

--

He can no longer see through the visor of his helm, so he removes it. The trees are sparser here, moss dry and straw-like underfoot. He has not seen this glade before, and can barely see it now, hewn from the same wild nature as the rest of the wood. He recalls Golmore, of all things, and Fran, and how forward on her toes she would always be whenever they passed through it. He has to wonder if Fran yet lives.

The fremescence of the creatures on the air has given way to other sounds of night, the hissing of dark lizards and the sudden cries of birds capturing prey. The wind stills, and it is warm. There are slight hills just before the edges fray black, rich with down in the darkness. He has bivouacked in worse places, and alone, and perhaps it _is_ death, death and weariness, if he continues.

_Rest,_ someone says, gently. It is not one of the voices he has been hearing all this time.

Finding a tree to support his back, he wrenches free of his helm. It falls from his grasp and bounces on the leaf-caked earth. He stares after it, at the low-flying dust and insects filling its hollows, winding around its horns. Basch kneels, and stares into its black absence of eyes. It becomes too painful to kneel, so he rocks back and sits.

The gauntlets begin to unfasten, followed by the greaves.

--

Sleep comes, in what would be the shadow of his armor if there was a moon to speak of. He shields his head from the falling flakes with his cuirass, pauldrons outstretched. He uses his cape for a blanket—old bones grow cold, or so they say—and clutches its hem in his bare hands. They are like the roots of the trees at his back, he thinks, the same ridged and spotted gold.

He has done his best to decide from which way the danger will come, but there are no walls to bolster his back. So he settles out flat, where the earth at least will not rise up around him. The grass strains and creaks beneath his back, and parts his bare toes.

Father would chide them, but indulge them in the end, every time the twins wished to sleep outside.

"…Father?"

"Yes," Noah sighs, "You've seen him before."

Basch sits up as quickly as his knotted spine will allow.

Noah is not smiling. "I mean as he is now. Why should it surprise you? You knew what would befall you, here."

"It has been years," Basch chokes.

"That is no excuse."

Johannes' ghost is only two thirds of a man, and fading at that. One persists as one is destroyed. He stands on both winding legs, his tattered cape twisting the trees behind him, but only his left arm remains from his half of a chest, half of a neck, half of a face. Where there is none of him, there is only black, frayed and curling toward the earth. There is still a sheath on his back for a sword he cannot carry.

"The dark hides what we have lost and makes it visible," Noah explains. His mouth is all of him that remains pale; it is his eyes that are blackened, and a thousand tendrils of the smoke leak from his battered chest and legs. His hands are burned to the shade of his leathers.

Stammering, "I," Basch gets to his feet. The ghosts are taller.

Noah stands as Noah stands, left foot turned slightly in. "I want to thank you."

"For Larsa?"

"Among other things. I'd hit you if I could, for others." He smiles, now, and a trail of the ink leaks out through the gaps in his teeth. "In fact, I think I shall try."

Basch laughs, "Come and try—"

But Noah has already charged, and his left fist hammers toward Basch's jaw—and Basch catches it in his right, swerving, all instinct.

It has happened so many times before, and yet a chill scuttles up his legs.

Basch locks his eyes with Noah's melting sockets, and Noah's fist goes slack. He interlaces their fingers. The spectral hand is cold, and Basch clings to it, holding too tight, and when his fingertips meet skin it is his own.

"He never stopped thinking of you," Basch whispers.

"Did you wish him to?" Noah asks, somberly, the smoke from his wrist curling between Basch's fingers. Over Noah's shoulder, Johannes has come to stand beside the twins, nearly between them, his half a face inscrutable.

Basch hangs his head. "I did not."

"You could have," Noah whispers. "He might have obliged you."

"It is too late."

"Aye."

Where Basch looks down, the apparitions have joined hands; Johannes takes Noah's right in his one remaining, and rests his half a forehead on Basch's shoulder. Even the stubble of his beard remains to the ghost, and rucks at Basch's neck.

Noah's whisper is heavy, sinking like that which pours from his eyes, his wounds. "I actually did absolve you, before the end."

Basch could only have hoped.

"I know you had to forgive me to become me," his brother goes on, and Basch looks away from the joined hands up to his face. "That did not mean you had to curse yourself."

Basch realizes that their mirrored fists have fallen into a salute, one within the other, between their chests.

Johannes looks up as well, and Basch turns to him, staring into his father's one remaining, flooded eye.

It has grown too hot for the cloak. Basch casts it off his chest, and folds it absently. Tucking it beneath his head, he closes his eyes again.

_This island,_ he thinks. _This forest, whatever it is._ His hair crackles as he tosses, snapping white like the dry grass. His breath is short, and what little cool air breaches his leathers is an insult to his wide-pored skin.

Vossler is kissing him.

It is less a kiss than an assault of teeth and tongue.

Eyes shooting wide, Basch scrambles through the apparition's body, shivering even after he has broken through the cold. He teeters on his old, bare feet, and whips around, grabbing one of his swords from where it was pinned to the earth. The blade is level in his hand, though the rest of him shakes and heaves.

"Basch," Vossler says, turning to regard him, and straightening.

Basch lowers the sword, and can barely ask, "A kiss for a dying man?"

Vossler answers on a trill of sinking smoke. "Come to this point, your death is your concern." The dark crinkles on the air around his mouth and eyes, and through the gash in his chest, and from the stumps that were his left hand's fingers. _The wounds I gave him,_ Basch recalls, and the hilt of his brother's sword rolls in his bare, flaccid fist.

The ghost is still and solid on his feet. "Why did you leave her side?"

"You know," Basch answers hoarsely.

"I know why you were compelled to. I do not know why you actually did it." He still carries Nightmare on his back. "Would all this have happened if you had not?"

Basch takes his time to realize, and say, "I am not given to know that."

Vossler comes nearer, slow and graceful and emanating power, but his blackened eyes stray.

"Why do you haunt me still?"

He stops. His kross-mail glimmers in the Mist. "In part because she will not have me, and I would not force myself upon her."

Basch whispers, "She forgives."

Vossler shakes his head and scoffs, or spits, toward the earth. "She forgives because time has dulled her pain, not because she has overcome it."

"_I_ forgive." Basch reaches forward, letting the sword fall.

He does not smile. "I know."

For a moment, Basch stares at his own hand, the beseeching veins and knots of long-dead, oil-yellowed skin.

"But you still wonder after my thoughts," Vossler says, "as if I still lived."

His eyes stray from his hand, and up toward his comrade's hollow eyes.

He meets them. "I am jealous. And I pity you both. But I begrudge you nothing."

Aloud, Basch thanks him, though he does not sound it, and neither man nor spectre smiles.

"I haunt you also because you wish it," Vossler goes on, and closes the gap between them, staggering as if weary. Basch is still, paralyzed, and Vossler half-collapses, his forehead heavy and sweat-soaked on Basch's shoulder. Like he did when they were young. Like his father. "Do you still?"

The creatures continue to thicken on the air, a few daring one creeping into Basch's mouth despite his canopy of armor. Rather than spit, he wipes them aside, churning his inner cheeks and gasping at the taste.

They are louder, this time of night, than ever he has heard them. He wonders if this is what ailed Ashe, when they were here together, all those years ago.

He does not wonder. He is certain of it.

Knotting his arms over his sunken chest, he thinks of her, and of their son, and the chill through him abates from his stomach outward. There is shame, and there is pride, and a closeted, hot voice against his twice-scarred ear. His heartbeat slows.

A cold hand rests atop his. Basch's eyes creak open past crust and dark and snowflies.

He does not know what his Majesty says, nor who all of the ghosts flanking him are. One persists as one is destroyed, Basch remembers, and Larsa is old, and stooped, and whole. His face is blank and eyes and mouth drip promises and words Basch cannot hear, and the twining dragons around his neck hiss on the wind. _This was supposed to happen,_ someone thinks, and the noise of a dozen croaking slats of armor masks the thought's origin. Dozens of half-formed ghosts, in the armor of the Judges Magister or of House Solidor or none at all; Vayne; Gramis; Zargabaath.

_I want you to be happy,_ Larsa says.

--

Surely it is morning.

Basch sees red, the gentle flickering of light passing through skin. His clothing is coarse against his body, the leather heavy, the linen creased. Every joint of him aches, every knuckle, every tooth. Each hair of his beard is matted to its neighbor, each pore on his cheeks stretched. His lips are chapped and spattered with the creatures on the air, and his eyes are caked shut with the same.

For a long time, he ascertains that he is breathing.

--

Rasler helps him to his feet. The prince has only the one wound, dripping passively from his chest. His lips are set thin and stern, framed by the trails pouring out of his eyes. Basch wonders if the prince had ever looked so serious in life.

The prince walks, and the leaves and roots are unmolested under his feet. Basch staggers, squinting and reeling as if through a heavy rain. He clutches his helm by the horn in one hand, and the prince's wrist in the other. Both are cold and running with his sweat.

Around him, the trees clench and breathe, and the insects settle. The sun has not quite risen.

There is a gate. It was not so far. Rasler stops, framed by it, the island's town tanned and glistening before him. Basch does as well. His cape rustling silently, the prince turns to Basch, and rises onto his tiptoes. His lips are cold on Basch's brow. He is snowflies.

Basch realizes he left his brother's arms and armor in the glade.

He leaves them.

--

It is years, three score at least, since he last had to petition for an audience. It took more trouble back then, and the wait was days; it is only minutes now, a word to the herald, and barely time to settle his feet before he is summoned. The doors to the throne room part, and were it not for the visor on his helm the light might blind him, but he is not deterred.

With the sun behind her, her white hair is nearly clear. It winds around her feathered and braided circlet, sparse, stiffly curled and parted off her face. Her cheeks are withering, her lips pale, still stubbornly unpainted. The prints and pocks around her eyes make them seem larger, sharper, darker. Her nose is lower, her neck thinner, her finery careful and opulent. She is like a hawk. She is the reason the old gods of this land had the heads of beasts.

She is the loveliest thing that Basch has ever seen.

It surprises him to behold her among so many others, her councilmen, her guards, her sons—_his son_—and Reks starts, staggers down one step upon the dais, almost in protest.

Basch shakes his head, and turns back to the Queen. Her knuckles are translucent and veined on the arm of her throne, the rings glimmering.

He sinks to one knee, tottering, and removes his helm.

Eyes closed, and ears dampened to the murmur of the crowd, he sets the thing down on the carpet, facing away from him. When he looks up to regard the Queen, there are wet trails perched at the wrinkles under her eyes, glinting in the sun.

He had planned to say something, to do something, and what he says and does is not this. He reaches for her, half-risen from the floor, and calls her by her given name.

"I—" she rasps, and it echoes until all else is silent. "…We," she corrects, lower, and palms the tears from her eyes, "We welcome you home, Captain."

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End file.
